OLD Hot-line at 712 432-8788 For Yiddish key in 11211# then 0# - For English key in 11206# then 0# - For Hebrew key in 10952 then 0# To Pause click 1 - To jump forward click 6 - To move backwards click 4 ___________________________________________

תקנות פון בלאג: יעדער קען שרייבען תגובות, אבער נישט קיין ניבול פה, באליידיגען אדער סטראשענען, ווער עס וועט נישט איינהאלטען די תקנות וועט מען חוסם זיין..Rules of the Blog: Everybody is welcome to write comments, however no vulgar language, insults or threats will be tolerated, you will be banned immediatelyDo NOT keep changing your Nick when writing comments, I can recognize you and will ban youIf you are aware of any molestation in the Jewish community, please report it to the proper authorities, and then please send us an emil with as many details as possible, so we can follow up and warn the TziburThis Blog is here for a purpose - to fight pedophilia and znus, not for snide remarks, filthy comments or threats

A juror in the sexual abuse case pitting a teen accuser against
Hasidic leader Nechemya Weberman said he broke the panel’s silence to refute
the notion the jury returned a guity verdict out of anti-Semitic bias.

“It wasn't religion, it wasn't their background, it wasn’t revenge,”
said the 42-year-old man, who asked not to be identified. “It was a young girl
and an old man alone in a room.”

The juror offered the first public account of the jury’s thinking
during deliberations in the high-profile trial, which ended Dec. 10 with a
guilty verdict to all 59 counts.

Weberman, 54, was convicted of molesting the now 18-year-old for
three years starting when she was 12, forcing her to perform oral sex and
reenact porn scenes. She started to see the unlicensed therapist after running
afoul of the insular sect’s stringent modesty rules.

Weberman’s lawyer George Farkas had claimed after the conviction
that Hasidic Jews do not have “the same shot with a jury as anyone else.”

But the juror said he had no preconceptions about Weberman's
community, adding the panel didn't view him as “a monster.”

“We realized we couldn’t make a flippant decision and ruin a man’s
life,” the juror recalled. “It was, ‘Oh boy, we have a serious job.’”

The juror said the panel accepted the victim’s “emotional”
testimony, which stretched over four days, but didn’t want to rely solely on
her words.

“We needed something else,” he said.

“Something else” came in the form of social worker Sara Fried, who
testified she diagnosed the girl with post traumatic stress disorder over the
years of molestation.

“That's what clinched it,” the juror said during an hour-long
interview at a Brooklyn diner last week. “We took the vote and everyone was
unanimous.”

He also noted there were multiple locks in Weberman’s home, that he
admitted to driving the girl upstate alone and that he housed other runaway
teens.

“It raises a lot of red flags,” he said.

The panel of 12 jurors — a racially diverse group of different
ages, including a college student and a retiree — weighed Weberman’s fate for
about five hours. After, jurors were ushered out of a side exit, escaping the
media glare.

Weberman, who’s facing a maximum of 117 years, is scheduled to be
sentenced Wednesday, though it will likely be later this month.